On June 28, Bill 9, The Public Sector Wage Deferral Act received royal assent and came into effect in Alberta. The bill affects approximately 180,000 public sector workers and 24 collective agreements across the province, and delays wage arbitration negotiations for public sector unions until after October 31, 2019. The impact of Bill 9 on Continue readingBattling Kenney’s Bill 9
Alberta
On Monday, August 19, Lethbridge City Council voted down a motion 6-3 calling for the provincial government to cut funding for a supervised consumption site called ARCHES. This came after community members in Lethbridge and across Alberta organized to send letters to city council and rallied outside city hall the day of the vote. Kym Continue readingA Victory for Lethbridge’s Supervised Consumption Site
By Bob Barnetson Alberta’s minimum wage for youth under 18 has been reduced as part of a broad series of labour-law rollbacks enacted by the new United Conservative government. The short of it is that workers under 18 and enrolled in school will have a minimum wage of $13 per hour, instead of the $15 per hour Continue readingEdmonton Public Library flirts with cutting teens’ wages
By Bob Barnetson Last week, Alberta’s United Conservative government introduced legislation designed to suspend the arbitration of wage re-openers in most public-sector collective agreements. This move is widely expected to give the government time to cook up wage-freeze or wage-rollback legislation. There’s good coverage and analysis of this decision elsewhere. One of the more interesting twitter exchanges about this that Continue readingLabour Politics and Deflection
Avery Edwards is a community organizer, gender freedom fighter, and a co-founder of PYROS, the Prairie Youth Radical Organizing School, located on Treaty 6 territory in Edmonton. In 2018, PYROS launched Queer Scouts, a cohort style leadership development program that empowers queer and trans youth to challenge injustice in their schools and communities through collective Continue readingLGBTQ Rights are Workers’ Rights, Climate Justice is Labour Justice
This week, Alberta premier Jason Kenney introduced Bill 2, an Act to Make Alberta Open for Business. This bill overall reduces labour costs for employers by reducing holiday and overtime pay, and introducing a youth minimum wage at 13$ which is lower than the $15 minimum wage introduced by the NDP. The bill also removes Continue readingFighting for $15 on the Prairies
As activists organizing with the Our Time campaign put together town halls in cities across Canada to discuss what a Green New Deal would look like for Canada, the wildfire season had already begun. Alberta’s High Level fire forced over 4,000 town residents and nearby First Nations communities to evacuate their homes. What does wildfire Continue readingWhat is it like to fight wildfires?
On Monday, May 13th, WestJet announced it was being bought out by a private equity firm Onex for 5 billion dollars. This would take WestJet from being a publicly traded company to a private one. WestJet pilots and cabin crew members have unionized all within the past several years. Chris Rauenbusch, president of CUPE Local Continue readingWhat will WestJet’s sale to Onex mean for workers?
Chloe Rockarts reflects on conversations with public sector labour leaders in Alberta for a RankandFile.ca article called The Past, Present and Future of Workers’ Power in Alberta. We reflect on tangible steps needed to build worker capacity to fight public sector cuts and privatization, build solidarity between unionized & non-unionized workers, and fight white supremacy. Continue readingFighting Back in Jason Kenney’s Alberta
Workers in the oil and gas industry have been used as a talking point by the Alberta NDP and United Conservative Party, both parties say they are the best choice for workers to get the Trans Mountain pipeline built and create more jobs in the industry. Albertans go to the polls on Tuesday, April 16. Continue readingWhat is it actually like to work in Alberta’s oil patch?
Broadcast date: April 7, 2019. Hosted by Emily Leedham. Today on the show, Marco Luciano, director of Migrante Alberta. Migrante is fundraising for a workers centre, where migrants can connect to resources, each other,and organize. We’ll talk about Migrante’s new Fort MacMurray chapter, the U.N migration compact and Jason Kenney’s changes to the temporary foreign Continue readingMigrante Alberta is fundraising for a workers’ centre
by Emily Leedham and Chloe Rockarts As the provincial election approaches, Alberta’s unions are hard at work educating their members about what is at stake for workers at the ballot box. While many unions identify as non-partisan, most have still expressed concerns about the right-wing populism sweeping across the country – and its implications for Continue readingThe past, present & future of workers’ power in Alberta